Please Grade My essay out of 12:
Prompt:
Many persons believe that to move up the ladder of success and achievement, they must forget the past, repress it, and relinquish it. But others have just the opposite view. They see old memories as a chance to reckon with the past and integrate past and present.
Adapted from Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation
Assignment:
Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present?
Essay:
Elie Wiesel once said :" for in the end, it's all the about the memory, its source and its magnitude and of course its consequences".I agree that memories hinder one to learn past ans success in the future. Memories are odds in one's road. Forgetting is the only way to better future.
Bad memories leaves scars in the heart. Germans accabled by economic sanctions, lost 15 % of their territories, remember the bitter past, then helped Nazis capture the Authority in Berlin and commit an extinction war which include genocides, Mass deportation, systematic destruction of infrastructure and led finally to nuclear warfare. And , end, by 50 millions of killed people ( most of them are civilians). This war lead to world's division into two blocks and to a half-a-century cold war which make people suffer from high-tension that prevent cultural, economic, and political interaction between east and west.
Learning from the past have never been a good idea to enlightenment philosophers who removed all the old memories of the past which include biasis, misconceptions and prejudges. They start from none the Age of Reason which help the Europe to raise from Middle-Age darkness by establishing new, scientific, political and ethical principles .What if this thinkers stick to the past? Would they reach the climb of blue-sky thinking? Would they clamber out of the dark box? Sometimes, memories and past hinder people from success in present.
None of any Chinese will forget the humiliating time of the Sino-Japanese War. During that eight-year bestial period, the whole land of China was crowded with slaughter, rape, bully and taunt. Never could a pregnant woman or an innocent child be granted a charity to escape from the evil cruelty. On the street crawled helpless people waiting for the deprivation of their last breath, and the ownership to become one of the cadavers.Such a past have made a stereotyped view toward Japanese which remains until the 20th century.
Elie Wiesel, an American-Jewish suffered heavily throught the Holocaust. He was a victim of Anti-Semitism in Nazis Germany (1939-1945). Following his liberation from Auschwitz concentration and extermination Camp, Wisel was a bitter, jaded man. He could not even write Night until several years later (a book illustrating his experience with his father in the Camp) because he lost his faith in God and Mankind. He vowed not to speak about his experience for 10 years after. A kapo saying has a huge impact on him:" here there are no brothers, no fathers, no friends, every one lives and dies for himself alone". His past haunted him rendering him passive. And even after achieving a huge success after publishing his triology Night, Dawn, Day, A sence of grief, Sorrow dominated him which explain that his melancholy memories are hard to forget.As he quoted: " one more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate, one less reason to live"
The essay that you wrote was quite good. However, I believe that you can hit closer to home with your explanation as to whether"memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present?". You should approach this essay from two sides. The side that says it hinders the efforts of a person to succeed in the future and the side that says the memories help a person learn from the past to succeed in the future. For example, Oprah Winfrey has painful memories of her past that helped her become the person she is now. Then mention Justin Beiber as a sample of a person who remembers his past, but never used to improve himself in the future. Close the paper with your opinion on the matter. That will make for a solidly written essay that answers the prompt for sure :-)
If I were the examiner who read this paper, I would give it an 8 based on the reasons that I gave above.I would also like to add a little more advice for you to consider. It is important in essays such as these to create a true sense of understanding for the reader. That is something that is usually accomplished by referring to your own experience regarding the prompt. So I believe that the essay prompt would be best served if you could also present a personal experience that relates to how you also have either memories that you try to forget about because it will not serve you any benefit to remember it while also having some memories that you often go back to as an inspiration to do better in the future.
